Asymptotic approximations for error probabilities of sequential or fixed sample size tests in exponential families

Asymptotic approximations for the error probabilities of sequential tests of composite hypotheses in multiparameter exponential families are developed herein for a general class of test statistics, including generalized likelihood ratio statistics and other functions of the sufficient statistics. These results not only generalize previous approximations for Type I error probabilities of sequential generalized likelihood ratio tests, but also provide a unified treatment of both sequential and fixed sample size tests and of Type I and Type II error probabilities. Geometric arguments involving integration over tubes play an important role in this unified theory.

[1]  H. Hotelling Tubes and Spheres in n-Spaces, and a Class of Statistical Problems , 1939 .

[2]  D. Siegmund Importance Sampling in the Monte Carlo Study of Sequential Tests , 1976 .

[3]  R. R. Bahadur Rates of Convergence of Estimates and Test Statistics , 1967 .

[4]  Daniel Q. Naiman,et al.  Conservative Confidence Bands in Curvilinear Regression , 1986 .

[5]  T. Lai,et al.  NEARLY OPTIMAL GENERALIZED SEQUENTIAL LIKELIHOOD RATIO TESTS IN MULTIVARIATE EXPONENTIAL FAMILIES , 1994 .

[6]  R. Khan,et al.  Sequential Tests of Statistical Hypotheses. , 1972 .

[7]  C. Stone A LOCAL LIMIT THEOREM FOR NONLATTICE MULTI-DIMENSIONAL DISTRIBUTION FUNCTIONS' , 1965 .

[8]  M. Woodroofe A Renewal Theorem for Curved Boundaries and Moments of First Passage Times , 1976 .

[9]  T. Lai ON OPTIMAL STOPPING PROBLEMS IN SEQUENTIAL HYPOTHESIS TESTING , 1997 .

[10]  S. Lalley Repeated likelihood ratio tests for curved exponential families , 1980 .

[11]  M. Woodroofe Nonlinear Renewal Theory in Sequential Analysis , 1987 .

[12]  D. Siegmund Error Probabilities and Average Sample Number of the Sequential Probability Ratio Test , 1975 .

[13]  Q. Shao Self-normalized large deviations , 1997 .

[14]  Inchi Hu Repeated Significance Tests for Exponential Families. , 1988 .

[15]  Daniel Q. Naiman,et al.  Volumes of Tubular Neighborhoods of Spherical Polyhedra and Statistical Inference , 1990 .

[16]  D. Siegmund,et al.  On Hotelling's Approach to Testing for a Nonlinear Parameter in Regression , 1989 .

[17]  David R. Cox,et al.  Edgeworth and Saddle‐Point Approximations with Statistical Applications , 1979 .

[18]  Heping Zhang,et al.  The Expected Number of Local Maxima of a Random Field and the Volume of Tubes , 1993 .

[19]  T. Lai Nearly Optimal Sequential Tests of Composite Hypotheses , 1988 .

[20]  S. Sadikova On the Multidimensional Central Limit Theorem , 1968 .

[21]  Iain M. Johnstone,et al.  Hotelling's Theorem on the Volume of Tubes: Some Illustrations in Simultaneous Inference and Data Analysis , 1990 .

[22]  T. Lai,et al.  A Nonlinear Renewal Theory with Applications to Sequential Analysis II , 1977 .

[23]  Michael Woodroofe,et al.  Large Deviations of Likelihood Ratio Statistics with Applications to Sequential Testing , 1978 .

[24]  Jayanta K. Ghosh,et al.  Valid asymptotic expansions for the likelihood ratio statistic and other perturbed chi-square variables , 1979 .

[25]  I. Johnstone,et al.  On Hotelling's Formula for the Volume of Tubes and Naiman's Inequality , 1989 .

[26]  H. Weyl On the Volume of Tubes , 1939 .

[27]  P. Groeneboom,et al.  Large deviations and asymptotic efficiencies , 1980 .

[28]  W. Hoeffding Asymptotically Optimal Tests for Multinomial Distributions , 1965 .

[29]  Tze Leung Lai,et al.  Boundary crossing problems for sample means , 1988 .

[30]  H. Chernoff A Measure of Asymptotic Efficiency for Tests of a Hypothesis Based on the sum of Observations , 1952 .

[31]  Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao,et al.  Linear Statistical Inference and its Applications , 1967 .

[32]  T. K. Chandra,et al.  Valid asymptotic expansions for the likelihood ratio and other statistics under contiguous alternatives , 1980 .

[33]  J. Munkres,et al.  Calculus on Manifolds , 1965 .

[34]  T. Lai,et al.  A Modification of schwarz's sequential likelihood ratio tests in multivariate sequential analysis , 1994 .